Wednesday, September 16, 2009

mammon, innit

It's often remarked how President Obama's delivery seems to add depth to whatever he's reading. His gestures really register the nuance that he is able to draw out of his text, which you feel might even have been written by the guy who wrote speeches for Bush. The president is really listening in to his speech. You can hear the same thing in certain Big Youth records, for example (as well as a more realistic political analysis), records which demonstrate more pronouncedly an affect common to inveterate cannabis smokers. I mention this because the text goes no further than blaming the crisis on the profligate tradeurs - officially sanctioned pantomime villains - when the crisis developed directly from the system of mortgaged property.

How different to Bush's speeches! George W seemed to me much more about dramatising how he, Bush, having slugged it out for the prerogative of getting up onto the anthill, could now say without challenge what was the truth, because it was what he was saying.

I thought Obama seemed a bit less expansive at the G20 meeting. Maybe it's more apparant that while he's evidently a good speaker, there's a potential for laying it on too much. Or perhaps seeing Prime Minister Gordon Brown at close quarters was "freaking him out".